Duggar Family News: Is Yet Another Sex Scandal Brewing In the ‘Counting On’ Family?
The latest Duggar family news is not good as yet another sex scandal appears to be brewing inside the former 19 Kids and Counting clan.
As In Touch Weekly reports, it appears that the Duggar family has a convicted sex offender connected to someone in their employ. The Duggar kids’ live-in tutor (the Duggars do not send their kids to school), Tabitha Paine, is engaged to Timothy Robertson. Robertson, it seems, has some skeletons in his closet.
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According to court records obtained by In Touch, Robertson, 46, is a convicted sex offender. In 2000, Robertson was convicted in South Carolina of criminal sexual conduct in the third degree. According to the South Carolina Legislature’s website, a person is guilty of that specific crime if “the actor engages in sexual battery with the victim and the actor knows or has reason to know that the victim is mentally defective, mentally incapacitated, or physically helpless” or “the actor engages in sexual battery with the victim and the actor uses force or coercion to accomplish the sexual battery.”
Christian News Today provides some more specifics about Robertson’s crime. In late 1999, Robertson entered the bedroom of the victim, removed her pants, and anally penetrated her with his penis. Robertson denies doing anything wrong. In a since-deleted Facebook post, Robertson said that his roommate walked in on the two consenting adults in the act and, confused, accused him of sexual assault. He also said that he took a plea bargain to avoid jail time.
Robertson didn’t do any time for this crime and was instead sentenced to a year’s probation and made to pay $943 in restitution. In 2008, he was officially pardoned and removed from the sex offender registry.
He tells In Touch Weekly that the past is behind him.
“[My past] has been cleaned. I love my fiancée. And I think the Duggars are a fabulous family. That’s all I need to put out there.”
Similarly, when asked about her son’s crimes, Robertson’s mother, Ruby Ann Robertson, offered excuses.
“When these young people party and drink they do silly, stupid stuff! A whole bunch of ’em was drinking that day. They was drinking all day long and it was just a big mess.”
As you are no-doubt aware, the Duggar family are no stranger to sex scandals. The Arkansas family, which follows an obscure and legalistic brand of evangelical Christianity that focuses largely on sexual purity, was all but undone by a sex abuse scandal involving one of their own children.
On May 21, 2016, In Touch Weekly found a 2006 police report that indicated that Josh Duggar, the oldest of the Duggar children, had molested five girls; four of them his own sisters.
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Specifically, Josh, who was between 14 and 15 years old at the time, fondled the girls on their breasts and genitals while they were asleep and sometimes while they were awake. Even more damning to the family was the news that Josh’s father and family patriarch Jim Bob Duggar didn’t report the allegations to the authorities right away.
Later, it was revealed that Josh had created an account on cheating website Ashley Madison. Josh went away to a faith-based sexual addiction treatment facility in Illinois, but the damage had been done. TLC canceled 19 Kids and Counting.
Since then, at least some members of the Duggar family have bounced back. A spin-off series, Counting On, follows the lives of some of the older Duggar girls and their families.
Do you believe the latest sex scandal will have any effect on the Duggar family’s TV show?
[Featured Image by FOX News Channel/ Getty Images]
